Enemy of my Enemies
by foxtree43
Summary: In which Sam finds herself stuck in a collapsed building in the middle of nowhere, with only a powerless, injured Vlad Masters as company. This is gonna be a long day.
1. Chapter 1

TO EVERYONE READING STARS ON THE HORIZON: Sorry for the long wait, but I will be updating it soon. I've just been so busy with school and work that it's almost impossible for me to sit down and really push through the writer's block I've got going on right now. Hopefully this story helps with the writer's block, and keeps you all entertained in the meantime ;D

This will be three chapters to this, and it will have an open-ended ending.

Rated T for slightly graphic depictions of injuries in the next chapter.

* * *

**Enemy of my Enemies**

Every light in the prison flared red, flooding the hallways and prison cells, washing the walls in crimson. The light came on and off, on and off, and in the background an alarm was already sounding, an ear piercing wail that nearly drowned out the sounds of everyone's voices—from the victory cries of hundreds of newly freed ghosts to the panicked yells of the Guys in White agents trying to round them back up (or, in some of the agents' cases, screams of fright as they scrambled to get away).

Sam swore her ears were about to pop, but she kept running.

This was a full-on prison riot now, and Sam had absolutely _no_ intention of sticking around and waiting for an agent to detain her again. Screw the Guys in White, and screw being "bait" for the ghost boy.

She was getting right out of dodge, and she was getting out _now._

As she dropped to the floor, dodging a stray ecto-blast that was hurtling down one of the hallways, and watched over her shoulder as it collided with a tall beefy man dressed in all white and threw him back against a wall, she thought, _Getting recaptured might not be a problem—let's just focus on not dying._

She sprinted up a set of stairs to the next floor.

There was very little that she knew about this prison, and most of what she _did_ know was problematic.

Her own cell was underground, two stories down. The prison only had two floors above ground, and she had no idea how far down it went.

It was also located in the middle of nowhere, not even in the same country as home. From the few times she had managed a glance out a window (only when she was out of her cell, given that there _were_ no windows in her underground cell), it was somewhere up north, surrounded by nothing but vacant fields that stretched on for miles and were covered in a thick layer of snow. She thought she may have seen some trees, but she couldn't be sure.

Okay, so walking out of here wasn't really an option. She knew that much.

Luckily, Sam also knew that there was a ghost portal on the top floor. That was how she had wound up here in the first place; the Guys in White agent had arrested her for "suspected association with Danny Phantom," and had taken her into what looked like a blatant copy of the Fenton's Specter Speeder. He had then driven through the portal at the Guys in White headquarters in Amity Park—another blatant plagiarism of a Fenton invention—and ended up coming back into the real world, right in this prison.

The trip had only been twenty minutes in the Ghost Zone, but there was no telling how far it was on Earth.

She was on the ground floor now.

She ducked mid-sprint, just barely avoiding a ghost that would have slammed right into her if she hadn't been quick enough. Instead it flew past and tackled a Guys in White agent into the wall, and the gun in the agent's hand went off, shooting a laser across the hallway and burning more than a few holes into the opposite wall.

In any case, the wall that the ghost had tackled him into was doing much worse; it collapsed on impact. Cement bricks fell down and toppled across the floor. Sam wasn't even completely sure that the agent was still alive after that, and she winced. More ghosts poured out of the hole left in the wall.

Sam kept running.

Just as she made it to the bottom of the next staircase, she heard an explosion rock the building from somewhere on the floor below her.

Some plaster fell from the ceiling to her left.

_Crap._

She took the stairs two at a time, and the sounds of ecto-blasts shooting back and forth behind her began to fade, giving way to the distinct sounds of a fight—a _normal_, human versus human fight—happening on the second floor. Confused, she ran to the top of the stairs, expecting anything, prepared for anything.

Or so she thought.

Instead, she stopped in her tracks, and her jaw dropped.

"_Plasmius?!"_

Sure enough, Vlad Masters was there, and he was fighting with a Guys in White agent.

Why he was fighting in human form, Sam had no idea, but she supposed he was doing a pretty good job even without the superpowers. He dodged a right hook thrown by the agent, deftly turning on the spot and bringing his elbow to the agent's throat. The agent turned just in time, but the blow still whacked him pretty hard in the side of his head, and he stumbled back for a second.

Sam gave herself all of three seconds to assess the situation.

There were two of her enemies fighting on the other side of the room, and she had to decide pretty quickly whether or not she was going to take sides (and with the week she had been having with the Guys in White, the odds were really tilted in Plasmius' favor). Her other option was to just let these guys duke it out on their own and make her escape while they were distracted.

She glanced toward the ghost portal off to her left. It was there, and it was intact, but there was no Specter Speeder.

Sam couldn't fly through the Ghost Zone without a vehicle.

Plasmius could.

… And that pretty much made her mind up, even though the prospect of flying through the Ghost Zone making small talk with _Vlad Masters_ was more than a little weird—and that was assuming he would even be willing to help her at all.

Neither of them had noticed her entrance yet. The agent seemed to be getting the upper hand, though, and he grabbed ahold of Plasmius' shirt and shoved him roughly into the wall opposite where Sam had come in. Now only Plasmius was facing her, but she had a feeling that the punches being dealt to his face were hindering his ability to see her.

The agent held Plasmius against the wall with one hand braced against his chest, and he drew back the other fist and landed a vicious punch to his opponent's jaw. Plasmius was starting to get weaker, and his attempts to block attacks were getting less and less successful. The agent aimed another punch at the half-ghost's face and Plasmius blocked with his arm, but the agent moved at the last second and landed a powerful blow to Plasmius' ribcage instead.

He drew back his fist and prepared to deliver another punch, and then—

_THUNK._

Sam stood over the crumpled form of the Guys in White agent, still holding the fire hydrant over her head, and she was panting from the effort of swinging it so hard.

She exchanged a glance with Plasmius, who was staring at her with the most shocked look she ever could have imagined, and she cocked a smirk.

"You're welcome," she uttered breathlessly. "Now let's go."

"_What?!_"

She ignored him and took a step toward the ghost portal, ready to sprint, but something stopped her.

The building was shaking.

A deep rumble sounded from below, and the floor tiles shook beneath her feet. She stared worriedly down at the floor, her hands held out by her side in an attempt to maintain her balance.

It wasn't until a crack formed in the floor between her feet that she realized what was happening, and she hastily jumped forward, making her way to the most stable looking part of the floor—and, conveniently, closer to the ghost portal. She whirled around, watching with a bit of worry as the floor she had _just_ been standing on gave way, the tile cracking to pieces as the ceiling collapsed on the first floor.

She stared across the gaping hole in the floor to Plasmius, and she shouted, "Plasmius, get over here! We have to get out through the portal!"

He didn't need to be told twice; Plasmius sprinted toward her and the portal, but just as he took the first step—

More of the floor was collapsing. They were running out of time. Plasmius easily could have jumped over the hole in the floor even without using his ghost powers, but just as he was a few feet from the hole, the floor beneath his feet began to collapse as well. He pushed against the crumbling floor and attempted to leap the hole that was now easily ten feet across…

… but he had his ghost powers, right?

Why wasn't he using his ghost powers?

_Crap, crap, CRAP!_

Before she knew what she was doing, Sam had already hurled herself forward and reached for Plasmius' hand. She barely managed to grab ahold of his wrist, bracing her other hand against the floor to keep herself from falling right down with him.

She cried out as his weight pulled down on her shoulder.

"WHY AREN'T YOU USING YOUR GHOST POWERS?!" she shouted, half in pain and half in anger, squinting past the sudden tears in her vision and surveying the ground below. She winced. The ground floor had also collapsed, and the drop below was easily thirty feet, more than that in a few places where the underground floors had also given way. Most of the ghosts were gone already, having fled the facility as soon as they could, but she could still see a few Guys in White agents desperately trying to get out of the collapsing building.

"Oh, that's _brilliant!_" Plasmius shouted angrily at her. "My ghost powers! Now WHY DIDN'T _I _THINK OF THAT?!"

"It's a valid—_argh—_question!" she grunted, trying really hard now to keep Plasmius up.

"I can't! There's a belt they put on me—_cheese logs, don't drop me!_"

He had slipped about an inch, and she grit her teeth and said, "I'm trying, okay? You're… _ugh…_ heavy!"

"Alright, alright! Just… ah…" Plasmius hurriedly brainstormed, and he twisted around to look below him. Just as he did, yet another piece of the floor below cracked away and fell down into the basement. He shuddered and looked back up at her. "Butter biscuits, that's high."

"You're not seriously telling me you're— _ugh_—afraid of heights!"

When he didn't say anything, she shot him a wide-eyed look.

"Really?! Plasmius, you can _fly!_ How the heck are you afraid of heights?"

"WELL I CAN'T FLY RIGHT _NOW!_"

The building quaked again, and Sam gulped. She didn't know how long she could hold him like this. Her shoulder was already on fire—she feared her arm was being pulled out of its socket. And regardless, there was no way she would ever be able to pull him all the way up, and they couldn't just stay here until the building collapsed around them.

"Okay, look," she said. "I'm gonna—I'm gonna have to drop you."

"DON'T YOU DARE!"

"Plasmius, the building's about to collapse, and we have… to get _moving_," she grunted out, still struggling to hold him up. "You're already hanging pretty low, and the floor right under you is only two stories down—"

"_ONLY?!_"

Sam heard part of the building shudder, and she knew Plasmius heard it, too.

They were running out of time.

"On three, okay?" she said.

She couldn't see him anymore; the effort of holding him up had brought tears into her vision, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

Without waiting for him to answer, she said, "One… two… _three!"_

As promised, she let him go, and she opened her eyes to watch him fall to the floor two stories below. It seemed to take longer than it should have for him to hit the floor, and when he did…

_CRAP!_

The second he hit the floor, it gave way under the pressure, and Plasmius fell straight through the crumbling tiles into the story below. When he hit the next floor, it held fast, but with his landing came a _crack_ so loud that Sam could hear it from three stories above. And it was definitely _not_ from the building. Sam winced.

"I'm coming down, okay?" she shouted down to him, and she scrambled to her feet. Adrenaline made the pain in her shoulder fade away to almost nothing, and she sprinted to the only spot where the gap in the floor was small enough to jump across. She easily leapt across it and made her way to the stairs, hurrying down them and jumping the last three steps.

This was ridiculous, she thought as she made her way down to the first basement floor.

She was traveling further _down_ into the basement of a collapsing building instead of just turning tail and leaving like she probably should, but she didn't really have a choice. Danny's archenemy or not, Plasmius couldn't use his ghost powers and was stuck in a collapsing building, probably with a broken leg if that cracking sound was anything to go by.

Yeah, he was a jerk, but she couldn't just leave him to _die_ here.

And as she made it to the floor she knew he was on, she found herself in one of the only parts of the building that wasn't currently falling apart—probably only because it was underground and all the way to one side of the building. She was in a hallway, and she sprinted down it toward the center of the building, where she knew there was a large section all but destroyed that Plasmius was currently sitting in.

When she got to the end of the hallway, she had to push a huge piece of fallen ceiling out of the doorway, and then she was there.

She sprinted up to Plasmius, who was sitting on the floor surrounded by fallen bits of wood and plaster, curled up into himself and holding his right thigh with both hands. There was a blood stain quickly growing on his pants, just above the knee.

"Plasmius, we have to move," she told him, and she reached for his hand. Now that she was paying attention, she saw the belt he had been talking about; it looked like a Specter Deflector, and the shiny metal was only partially hidden by the bottom of his suit jacket.

"I can't," he said, his voice strained. "My—my leg's broken."

"I'll help you," she insisted. Her right shoulder was beginning to throb now, and she continued, "The stairs over that way"—she gestured with her head toward where she had just been—"are still intact. Come on, I'll help you get up them, and then we'll get that stupid belt off of you and you can fly us out of here."

He still looked uncertain, gripping his thigh with both hands and giving her a look that stated he clearly did not trust her to half-carry him up two flights of stairs.

Nonetheless, he seemed to decide that she was his best option. He reached out and took her hand, allowing her to pull him to his feet—well, _one_ foot anyway. His right foot was barely grazing the floor; he made sure of it.

Sam situated herself on his right side, getting his arm over her shoulder. It wasn't perfect, especially given that he was nearly a foot taller than her, but she figured that her support was better than nothing.

"_OW!_" she cried out in spite of herself when his hand grazed her right shoulder. She grit her teeth and spat out, "Careful, my shoulder hurts."

He spared her a quick glance and then moved so that his arm was no longer around her. Instead, he put a hand on her left shoulder and pressed down on her each time he would have had to step forward with his right leg.

"You've dislocated it."

"Yeah, well," she said as they made their way toward the door, "I did just catch a grown man falling to his death, so."

Again, the rumbling of the walls around them cut off their conversation, and Sam gulped and looked up. She could see clear through the entire building up to the overcast sky, and more and more of the ceiling above them was beginning to fall. There were already large sections of the roof lying around them, covered in piles of snow.

It wasn't until a large hunk of ceiling directly above them dislodged itself and came hurtling down toward them that Sam cried, "LOOK OUT!" and shoved Plasmius off of her.

Plasmius fell onto his butt, and Sam stumbled back a few steps, but it was just in time. Half a second later, a five-foot-wide piece of wood and plaster fell right between them.

Everything happened at once after that. The rest of the ceiling began to crumble, and the walls above ground fell inward. Sam screamed, throwing her good arm over herself and ducking her head down in preparation to be crushed by the falling building, and the sounds of tumbling wood and stone drowned out the sounds of anything else.

Then, before she knew it, the sounds stopped.

She opened her eyes slowly, lifting her head a bit to take in her surroundings, and she felt her heart sink.

They were surrounded on all sides by hunks of stone and wood and crumbling bits of plaster. The doorway that led into the hallway was no longer even visible, if it was still intact at all, and Sam could no longer see the sky past the slabs of ceiling and broken wall that had fallen on top of the barely-held-together ceiling just above them. The building had fully collapsed now, but luckily, she was unharmed aside from her already dislocated shoulder. She shot a glance toward Plasmius, who was staring with wide eyes at their surroundings as well.

_Well he's alive,_ she granted. _That's good, at least._

"So…" Plasmius spoke, scanning over the walls with a slightly worried look on his face. Sam was certain that he was doing exactly what she was doing—looking for a way out—and having just about as much luck as she was.

That is, none. They were pretty much trapped.

Vlad cleared his throat. "What was that you said about getting this belt off of me?"


	2. Chapter 2

I reeeally should be studying for finals :/ whump.

Warnings: Graphic descriptions of an open fracture, and some blood. Alcohol is also involved.

* * *

**Chapter 2**

"Oh, you have _got_ to be _kidding_ me," Sam groaned, one hand coming up to grasp at her hair as she stared wide-eyed at their surroundings.

The door was gone. Well, she granted, the door leading to the staircase was gone at least. There was another door on the opposite side of the room, to their right, mostly covered with fallen hunks of wall and ceiling—but, unlike the other door, not _entirely_ covered. She might be able to shimmy herself through what little space was left in the door, but who knew where that might lead?

Besides, even if it _did_ get her outside of this building, they were in the middle of nowhere.

She glanced back at Plasmius, and then down at his injured leg. There was no way he was going to fit through that space even without his injury to worry about—heck, Sam wasn't even totally sure that _she_ would fit.

She turned her back to him and placed her hands on her hips, making a show of surveying the room some more while she mulled over her options.

… Or rather, her _lack _of options.

Even if that little space led to a feasible exit from this stupid place and she managed to escape without Plasmius, then she would still be stuck. They were in the middle of nowhere. Without Plasmius and his ghost powers, she was pretty much doomed to wandering around the middle of… Antarctica or Siberia or _wherever_ the heck this place was, and she had no idea where the nearest civilization could be. They could be hundreds of miles from _anything_ for all she knew.

_Darn it,_ she thought, closing her eyes and wrinkling her nose in distaste. _Darn it, darn it, darn it._

Behind her, Plasmius chose that moment to clear his throat.

She whirled around to face him, levelling him with an even glare before he could get a single word out.

"If I help you get out of that belt," she said, pointing at him, "you won't just ditch me, right? You'll help me get out of here?"

Plasmius blinked, staring at her in surprise. He obviously hadn't been expecting her to get right to the point like that.

"Er—well, I wouldn't—"

"Promise me," she interrupted, her hands still planted firmly on her hips. "I'm not an idiot, and I know you're not, either. You already know that as soon as that belt's off, you could just abandon ship and I would be stuck here. I want your _word_ that you won't do that. No tricks, no stupid plots where you try and leave me trapped here to mess with Danny. None of that. Just a simple 'I help you, you help me' deal."

When she was finished, she crossed her arms over her chest and shrugged—immediately regretting it, because her shoulder still _hurt_. But she managed to hide the wince, and he didn't seem to notice.

She asked, "So… deal?"

Plasmius glanced down—but whether it was at the belt or the wound in his leg, Sam didn't know. He looked back up at her with a frown and asked, "I don't suppose you'll help me at _all_ if I say no, will you?"

"Pfft. What do you think?"

He paused, looking at her with a raised eyebrow, but then he rolled his eyes and sighed in defeat. "Very well, then."

That was probably about as close as she would get to a promise from him, so she decided to drop it.

She still had her arms crossed over her chest, and she looked him over, her brow creased in concern. He didn't look so good. She suggested, "Maybe we should figure out what to do with your leg before we worry about that belt."

"No," he insisted, shaking his head. "The belt comes first."

"Plasmius, you look like you're about to pass out," she said, and it was true. He was several shades too pale, and that bloodstain just above his knee was growing a little too quickly for her liking. Getting that belt off of him could wait, because ghost powers or not, he wasn't going to be able to do anything if he passed out from blood loss.

"The belt comes first," he repeated, glaring at her.

She glared right back. He was being ridiculous!

"You know what? Fine," she relented, rolling her eyes. "I'll try to get the belt off, but only for a few minutes. Then I'm gonna go find some first aid in this stupid place, and there's nothing you can do to stop me. Got it?"

His glare didn't waver.

"_Got it?_" she repeated.

Again he didn't answer right away, but then he growled, "Fine."

Sam nodded, but as she approached him and sat down, getting ready to figure out how to pick the lock on that belt, he interrupted her.

"Wait."

She paused and raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh, what _now?_"

"You won't be much use to me with one arm," he deadpanned, and then nodded toward her shoulder. "Turn around."

Confusion settled into her features, and she didn't move. "Why?"

"Your shoulder is dislocated," he explained, only somewhat patiently. "It needs to be moved back into place. Otherwise it will heal like that, and then your right arm will be useless."

Sam chewed the inside of her cheek in uncertainty, hesitating.

Plasmius seemed to get that she didn't quite trust him, and he rolled his eyes and let out a heavy sigh that fell somewhere between annoyance and acquiescence. He then locked eyes with her and said to her, his voice completely steady with conviction, "Look at me. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to make sure you have two, fully functioning hands with which to help me. Fair enough?"

After another second of hesitation, Sam finally gave in. Plasmius was sitting with his back against the wall, and he looked like it was taking all of his strength just to speak—he would be totally screwed right now without her help. She nodded, turning away from him and giving him her back. She tilted her head away from him to keep her hair out of the way, and she felt him grab onto her right arm with one hand and place the other hand over her right shoulder blade.

"This won't hurt a bit," he said. "On the count of three. _One—"_

Suddenly and without warning he shoved her arm back into place, and blinding pain shot through her shoulder. She let out a cry of indignation and shouted at him, "You said that wouldn't hurt!"

"I lied," he replied simply, and when she turned to glare at him, she saw that there wasn't a hint of remorse on his face.

_Surprise, surprise,_ she thought.

He simply shrugged, unfazed by her anger. "It's best if you don't expect it. Feel better?"

She frowned, but then she rotated her arm around, stretching her shoulder out. It was still a bit sore, but she had to admit it did feel better. It felt _worlds_ better.

"Yeah," she answered without bothering to hide the surprise in her voice. "It actually does."

Plasmius nodded, and then he looked down at the belt. "Now, if you wouldn't mind…?"

Once more Sam rotated her arm around, making sure that her shoulder really was back to normal, and once she was satisfied she nodded and repositioned herself so that she was kneeling at his side.

Plasmius shifted a bit, moving the flaps of his suit jacket so that she could see the belt fastened around his waist just over his dress shirt. As he moved, though, his leg was inevitably moved as well, and he couldn't hide a pained wince.

She frowned. "Plasmius, we really should—"

"_No_," he insisted, and Sam imagined that he _meant_ for his voice to be steady with conviction, but it didn't quite come across that way. If she didn't know any better, she would have said that he sounded frightened. He continued, "Once I can use my ghost powers again, I'll be able to heal quickly. I can make the bone intangible and move it back into place. It will be easy."

She glanced down at his leg, and then back up at him. So his leg _was_ broken; she had suspected as much, but now he had confirmed it. Was it an open fracture? Was that why he was bleeding, because the bone had pierced through his skin? The thought almost made her shudder, but she wisely held it back.

He obviously wasn't going to let her even attempt to fix his leg, not until she worked on getting the belt off of him. Apparently having his ghost powers back was more important to him than, you know, _not bleeding out_, but she decided that it would be better to work _with_ Plasmius than against him—even if he was being ridiculous.

She pulled a bobby pin out of her hair, and then snapped it in half so that she had two little lock picks.

And then she got to work.

The lock on this belt was pretty standard, similar to the lock on a doorknob—and Sam had picked _plenty_ of those locks before, so it shouldn't have been too much of a problem. But just when she thought she had managed to get all the little cogs in place, she tried to push the tumbler, and it just wouldn't move. She stuck her tongue between her lips as she concentrated, shimmying the half of her bobby pin all over inside the little lock, really pushing the tumbler as hard as she could, but it didn't even budge.

_Darn it,_ she thought. _Come on, you stupid piece of…_

She sighed in annoyance when she was forced to stop trying, lest she actually snap part of the bobby pin and accidentally leave a piece of it stuck in the lock. With that half of the bobby pin still in its position in the lock, she put the other half between her teeth and bit the end of it, bending it into a little hook.

She tried starting over, being sure that she moved the right pieces at the right time, just in case she had missed something before.

But again, the lock wouldn't budge.

She growled under her breath. She could get this. She knew she could.

Again she started over. _Okay, slower this time,_ she told herself. She had to have missed something, not moved a part at the right time, _something._

After a few minutes of trying to make the lock budge, she chanced a glance up at Plasmius.

She had thought that he was watching her pick the lock—actually, she had _known_ that he was watching—but now, he had leaned his head back against the wall. His eyes were shut, and it actually looked like he might be falling asleep.

"Hey," she said, snapping her fingers in front of his face. His eyes opened a bit, and he blinked. "Stay awake."

"I am," he answered with a half-hearted glare, but he didn't sound all that convincing.

"Alright, I'm done," she said, abandoning her lock picking efforts in favor of standing up and dusting her hands off. "I'll try the lock again, but right now I'm getting you some first aid."

"But—"

"Nope!" she interrupted, holding up her hand to silence him. "No buts. I'll be right back."

Without another word, she headed off toward the door on the right, the one with just enough space left for her to squeeze through. When she got to the door, she kneeled down and bent over to peer through the space. Sure enough, the door led to a hallway that was only _partially_ collapsed, but it was at least navigable.

This place was huge, she knew, and she was certain that it was at least worth it to _look_ through the labyrinth of underground hallways. Maybe she would find some first aid. Maybe she would find a way out. Heck, maybe she would even find a key to that stupid lock on Plasmius' belt.

She turned to point at Plasmius and reminded him sternly, "Stay awake. I'll be ten minutes, tops."

With that, she squeezed through the opening in the doorway and disappeared.

* * *

The girl was taking too long.

Vlad glanced down at his watch, and he groaned out loud.

_How? _How on Earth had she only been gone seven minutes? It felt so much longer than that, and his leg was on fire—yes, it was definitely broken, probably an open fracture, but he couldn't be sure until he actually got a good look at it—and he was tired, and he felt lightheaded, and he was stuck here with Daniel's brat of a girlfriend, and he couldn't use his ghost powers, and…

Well, alright, he thought to himself, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes. He had to admit, this _was_ an improvement from the situation he had been in before.

It _was_ uncomfortably hot in here, though. He was close to breaking out in a sweat.

Just as that thought crossed his mind, he heard movement, and he lifted his head to watch as the girl returned, crawling in through the half-obscured doorway across the room to his right.

She was carrying a couple of things, but he couldn't tell what they were right away.

A glint of metal caught his eye, and his eyes immediately shot right to the source—a small pair of surgical scissors in the girl's left hand. He felt a tremor of instinctual panic in his gut, but he quickly got over it and suppressed the shudder that was threatening to run up his spine.

As she approached, she didn't hesitate to start talking again. "Okay, so I didn't find a full first aid kit, but I _did_ find some scissors, and—um, I _think_ this is some kind of gauze," she said, eyeing up the roll in her other hand. Yes, it was gauze, Vlad noted, but it was a little bit different from what the girl was probably used to seeing. For one thing, it was glowing green.

"It's a special kind of bandage," Vlad explained to her with a nod. "Ghosts can't phase through it."

The Guys in White had that gauze so that they could bandage up the ghosts they vivisected, but Vlad didn't bother telling her that. The girl was giving him a questioning look, and he simply added, "It will work."

She seemed to take that well enough, and she put the gauze roll and the scissors down on the floor.

"I found this, too," she said, pulling a metal flask out of her pocket. "I don't know what exactly is in it, but it _reeks_ of alcohol, so it should be pretty good for disinfecting—hey!"

He had swiped the flask out of her hand before she could even finish talking, and he unscrewed the lid without acknowledging her protests, sniffing the drink inside to try and determine what it was.

The girl was right. It did reek of alcohol.

_Good._

Without wasting another moment, he upturned the flask and took a swig. The second the drink touched his tongue, he recognized it as Jack Daniel's.

_Well_, he thought,_ at least someone in the Guys in White has good taste._

"Shouldn't you… oh, I don't know, NOT be doing that?!" the girl cried out, staring at him with wide, incredulous eyes.

"If I'm going to be subjected to a fourteen-year-old with no medical experience applying first aid to my broken leg," he said, "I am _not_ going to do it sober."

He inclined his head to her and raised the flask in a mock toast—ignoring her indignant shout of, "But isn't alcohol a bad idea when you're _bleeding to death?!_"—and then he took another swig and then another, barely pausing for breath until he had finished nearly the entire thing. Only about an inch's worth of the drink remained in the flask, but he figured that would be plenty for disinfecting his wound.

"You done?" the girl asked, glaring at him, and she snatched the flask out of his hand.

"Yes, actually," he answered with a nod, but he frowned when he noticed that he wasn't quite feeling the effects of the alcohol yet. _Damn_, he thought. Even with this blasted belt on, his ghost powers were still keeping his metabolism as high as ever. Oh, well. At least the drink was strong enough to affect him a _little _bit.

The girl rolled her eyes at him and sat down, grumbling under her breath.

She looked over his leg, and then she glanced up at him and grabbed the scissors.

"So," she said, grabbing a section of his pant leg and getting to work. "How long have you been here?"

He frowned. She was obviously trying to distract him while she worked, so that he wouldn't be paying his full attention to how much his leg hurt. And in spite of himself, he was grateful for the effort, even if it wasn't really working.

He thought for a few seconds, staring ahead into space.

"I'm not sure," he finally answered. "Three weeks, maybe?"

"_What?!"_

"What?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

She stared at him incredulously, and he glanced down and noticed that his entire pant leg was already cut away, so it looked like he was wearing some bizarre form of half-pants, half-shorts. He blanched when he caught sight of the wound. _Definitely_ an open fracture. A glistening white section of bone had pierced straight through the skin, and it was _still_ bleeding far too much to be healthy. The girl pulled him away from his thoughts and asked, "What do you _mean_, three weeks?"

"I mean three weeks," he deadpanned with a passing glance up at her, but despite the girl's concern, she was not succeeding in taking his attention away from his injury. "Er, that… that doesn't look great."

He reached down and—too frightened to actually _touch_ it—gripped his thigh with both hands, just above the wound.

The girl looked every bit as nervous as he felt. She was grimacing, and she asked, "Do you know how to treat a compound fracture?"

"Not—not really, no," he admitted, but even that was being generous. He had no _idea_ how to treat this. He had a feeling that his face had probably gone several shades too pale, and he gulped.

"Well, I don't really know, either, except for what I've seen in movies," the girl admitted.

At least she was being honest.

Vlad gulped again.

"If—er, if you…" he tried to suggest, and he cleared his throat and tried again. "If you push the bone back into alignment, it should heal correctly. I—I think."

"Uh, Plasmius, I'm no expert, but I don't think that's how broken bones work."

"Maybe not for anyone else," he said and, despite the fact that he knew his eyes must have been unfocused and glazed over, he managed to smirk at her. He hoped that the expression came across as nonchalant as he was hoping, but somehow he doubted that it was working. "My body heals a bit faster than most. Haven't you ever noticed Daniel never comes out of a fight with anything worse than a bruise?"

It was a rhetorical question; he _knew _she must have noticed that much about Daniel's ghost powers. She paused in uncertainty, though, chewing on the inside of her cheek, and she gestured toward his belt and asked, "Even with that belt on?"

"I believe so," he said. "It's—it's definitely worth a try."

There was no _definitely_ about it, and the blood loss combined with the light alcoholic buzz made it impossible for him to put any certainty at all into his voice.

Still, they didn't have a lot of options.

She placed a firm hand on his leg and prepared to shift it back into place, just like he had done for her shoulder.

After a second, though, she sighed in defeat, loosening her grip on his leg and sending him an apologetic look. He glared at her in frustration; he should have _known_ she would be too weak to do it, and he really didn't want to have to do it himself. She shook her head helplessly and said, "I don't know, Plasmius, I really don't think I can—"

And then she snapped the bone into place in one swift motion.

He didn't hear the _snap_ of his bone shifting back into place. He didn't hear _anything._ The only thing he registered at all was the white hot pain that flared up from his leg and sent an involuntary howl erupting from his throat. He doubled over, every muscle tensed, still gripping his thigh as black dots burst in front of his eyes.

When his scream stopped echoing around them, he was still panting—he couldn't seem to get enough air into his lungs no matter what he did—and he was still doubled over himself.

He was vaguely aware of the girl talking. She said, her voice laced with sympathy, "It's best if you don't expect it."

It wasn't until he slowly leaned back and rested his head against the wall behind him that he shot her a glare. It must have lacked any venom, though, especially considering that his face was soaked in sweat and that he could feel tear tracks on his cheeks.

"That…" he said, still breathing heavily, "was awful."

"Yeah, well, it already looks better," she told him, avoiding his eye and looking down at his leg. "I will still have to stop the bleeding, though."

"Just… just get it over with," he breathed out.

And she did. She dumped the rest of the alcohol over his wound, and he tensed up and hissed through his teeth. Still, it wasn't all that bad compared to setting his bone back into place—or maybe he was just going numb. _That_ was a frightening thought. The girl set about unravelling the ghost-proof gauze, and Vlad closed his eyes, trying to ignore it.

He felt light-headed, and he was still sweating—even though he was fairly certain that it was below freezing in this room, given that some of the larger hunks of roof lying on the floor were covered in piles of snow.

His thoughts were in a sort of fog now, but whether that was the Jack Daniel's or the blood loss, he didn't know. Maybe it was both.

_I reeeeally hope I don't die here,_ he thought. _That would… That would be unfortunate._

"Hey," the girl interrupted his thoughts, and he opened his eyes to see her snapping her fingers in front of his face again. She reminded him, "Don't go to sleep."

"'m _not_," he slurred, shooting her a glare.

Apparently he wasn't being that convincing. The girl raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him and asked, "What day is it?"

He blinked, slowly, and thought for a second. "Er… Wednesday, I believe…?"

"No, it's Saturday. Come on, Plasmius, focus. I need you to stay awake, okay? You're our only ticket out of here, and I can't have you passing out on me."

"Duly… noted," he answered with a slow nod.

"Okay, so how long have you been here?"

The questions were working. He wasn't falling asleep anymore, anyway, as he tried to dredge up answers from the back of his mind. "Twenty… one days? Maybe twenty-three. You said it's Wednesday?"

"Saturday."

"Then… twenty-four," he answered. "Yes, most likely twenty-four… I must have been unconscious longer than I thought."

Yes, he must have been unconscious for at least three or four days. That explained how it wasn't Wednesday, anyway.

"What happened?" the girl asked, and he raised an eyebrow at her in questioning. "How did you get here, I mean?"

He knew he probably shouldn't tell her everything, but he was too tired—or maybe just too weakened at this point—to maintain a filter between his brain and his mouth. He shrugged.

"They tricked me. I had been trying to… infiltrate the Guys in White," he explained, though he had to occasionally pause to catch his breath. "I wanted to see what they were doing… and hopefully steal some of their information, or their weapons, or… whatever else I could get my hands on. I contacted the manager of their division and told them… that I wanted to make a donation, but that I wished to take a tour of their Amity Park headquarters first."

He glanced at her, but she wasn't looking at him, instead continuing to wrap gauze around his leg.

"It seemed to be going well enough," he continued. "They welcomed me in, talked up how much progress they were making with ghost weapons, and then…"

He trailed off, remembering only flashes. Electricity from a Guys in White weapon and then from his own fingertips in instinctual retaliation. Pain erupting from the back of his head, and then nothing.

"Then… what?" the girl asked.

He shook his head. His eyes were open, but he wasn't looking at her, instead choosing to stare ahead at nothing. He felt a bit more lucid now, but only a bit. "Someone came up behind me and electrocuted me, and then something hit me in the back of the head. I blacked out. And when I woke up, I was in a ghost-proof prison cell with this… this blasted _belt_ on me."

"Ouch."

He still wasn't looking at her, and even though he slowly nodded, he was lost in his own thoughts and had barely noticed what she had said at all. He continued, "Some ghost or another must have told them who I was… because they knew. They were planning on capturing me the whole time, from the moment I walked in the door."

"And you've been here since then?" she asked.

He finally looked at her. She was giving him a look of pity that he might have blasted her for if he was in a better state of mind, but luckily for her, he wasn't.

He nodded.

It was then that he noticed that she was done with the gauze. She had wrapped the entire roll around his leg—probably more than was strictly necessary, winding around all the way down to cover the knee and halfway back up his thigh—but it certainly wasn't going to bleed anymore.

She stood up, clapping her hands together as if to dust them off, and looked around the room.

"Stay here," she said, walking toward one of the fallen slabs of what used to be the building's roof.

Vlad huffed. "Actually, I was thinking I would get up and leave, but since you asked _so_ nicely, I suppose I'll stay."

"Ha, ha," she droned. She bent over the largest fallen pile of snow in the room, scooping up as much of it as she could into her bare arms. She hastily made her way back over to Vlad, hissing, "_Cold, cold, cold, cold, cold!_" the entire way, and she dropped the snow onto the floor beside him.

She knelt down and pushed the snow toward him.

"What are you doing…?" he asked uncertainly, raising an eyebrow at her.

"It'll stop the swelling," she said simply. "Lift your leg."

He wordlessly humored her and obliged, and she pushed the snow underneath so that he could rest his leg down onto the pile. When she finished piling the snow up, and Plasmius lowered his leg onto it, she added, "And hey, elevating an injury's supposed to be a good thing, right?"

_Sounds about right_, he thought—though he still wasn't completely sure, and he suspected that she was no more informed about this than he was. He had to admit, though, she had done a good job. He wouldn't be walking any time soon, but it was a vast improvement over thinking that the pain alone was going to make him pass out.

The girl shook the remaining snow from her arms and shivered, rubbing her hands together. He watched as she hugged her torso and glanced around at their surroundings.

"Why were _you_ here?" he asked suddenly.

"Huh?" she asked, looking at him. "Oh, uh, right. They arrested me for 'suspected association with the ghost boy.' It was a load of crap, though, just an excuse to get me under their control so they could lure Danny in to try and save me."

"They took you in as bait," said Vlad, and then he made a face, wrinkling his nose. "How… _typical_."

"T—tell me about it," she said, another shiver running through her. She rubbed her hands over her upper arms to try and warm herself up.

She looked around the room, and her eyes paused on the opening through which she had already gone and explored. Vlad wondered if she had found a way out, but then he quickly realized that it didn't matter. They were in the middle of nowhere; he had seen _that_ much when he had nearly escaped, when he had passed by a window on the second floor and seen nothing but snowy fields for miles and miles, only ever interrupted by a smattering of trees here and there. Without his ghost powers, they were still trapped, and she must have known it.

She sighed and turned to look at him. She eyed him up and down, and then she asked, "How are you feeling?"

"Better," he said with a casual shrug.

She frowned.

"Want me to try picking that lock again?"


End file.
